We cannot get enough of The Bridges at Rancho Sante Fe. Can you blame us?

Real Estate listing videos have come a long way. We love when our clients are open to us going all out and not holding back with the types of shots and style that we feel would add value to their existing marketing campaign. And at The Bridges, there’s no holding back. And let’s be honest, we are not “cookie cutter”, template type of content creators. We really enjoy personalizing, and customizing our videos for each property, estate, agent, and community. We spend a lot of time learning about the home, and what our client’s expectations are and working together with them to learn how we can provide an excellent finished product. Ultimately, we want to help our client attract buyers and sellers and support their brand at the same time.

With the estates inside The Bridges, we really love to feature the exclusive community, in addition to the beautiful home. So, we find a nice balance of footage from the neighborhood, plus the home and the amazing features, and strive to make it flow effortlessly. Some videos do not need a voice over. Some videos do. We like the addition of a voice over and what it brings and adds to the video. From our perspective, combining the voice over and a music track helps hold the video together. It’s helps make it all cohesive which allows it to flow nicely. And that’s part of the fun…writing out some copy that help detail the features, searching for music that also fits the style of the home, and editing it all together. Flying drones and filming around the beautiful community is pretty fun, too.

One of the things we enjoy the most with brand new products, is that there are several different directions you can take the video. Informational? Narrative? Testimonial? Infomercial? What works best for our client and the current stage that he’s in with his product? We thrive off getting to learn about the product. We love working with the excitement and passion behind the entrepreneur as well. They often have a lot of great ideas to contribute, and this project was no exception.

In collaboration with our client, we story boarded, scripted, and shot this video both on the golf course and in our SDAV studio. The goal for our client was to really hammer home the functionality of what his product is, and the features. He didn’t want anybody to be uncertain about what the the product is. It’s a golf towel! He wanted to forego the stylish lifestyle type of footage and narrative. He wanted to pass on the “fluff” and get right to the point. We can save those types of marketing videos and commercials for later down the line.

So, we headed out to The Country Club of Rancho Bernardo and had the course to ourselves. Our client is well connected with pro and amateur golfers and he lined up a couple of them to join us for the majority of the key shots. It went smooth and was awesome getting to work with talented golfers that could really help sell the product.

We love how the shots turned out, especially the tee shots with the jib and slow motion. Our client is going to be launching a big social media campaign, so we added text on the screen which is great for Facebook and social media apps that do not play sound automatically.

What happens when we get to spend several days shooting in the beautiful town of Encinitas (Coastal San Diego County)? We over shoot! Too much fun. I could shoot there anytime, any day, just name it.

We are more than excited to share this video and the story behind it. We had the pleasure of connecting with Encinitas Coast Life, a Real Estate and Lifestyle Marketing company representing the heart and soul of Encinitas, CA. They are Realtors by trade, and being community ambassadors for their awesome home town is a no-brainer for them and the perfect fit for marketing themselves, their business, and their community.

Once we met them, we completely understood and loved their passion for their town. The question was, how can we make a video that shows off their community, but not feel like a typical “Real Estate” Marketing Video. Good question. So, we collaborated together on the idea of just making a stellar lifestyle video of Encinitas… why people love Encinitas, and showing off the insights and local culture that everybody would agree is part of why you want to live in Encinitas. Oh, and in only 2-3 minutes. We emphasized the notion NOT to feel obligated to make this about Real Estate and selling homes, but to make it more about the feel and lifestyle of the little town in itself.

So, we narrowed down several favorite local establishments, got their permission to let us hang and film with them, and had a blast filming for the week. Some of our favs were getting behind the bar at Ironsmith Coffee Roasters and learning how much attention to detail they put into their roasting process. We fearlessly sweat it out in 100+ degree temps at a Yoga Tropics class. We literally were dripping sweat in the short amount of time we were there. Most memorable of all, would probably be the sunrise surf session with some of their buddies. We brought out our drone for some pretty epic aerial shots, and even got in the water as well.

Sometimes our work is not quite “work”.

Overall, we love the video, the music track that sets the tone, and we feel pretty good about nailing the culture and vibe of the town. Who doesn’t love seeing a vintage VW surf bus?

Since we captured tons and tons of footage from each location, we now have plenty of footage for Encinitas Coast Life to pull from when they want to do short social media clips, quick email teasers, or to offer specific marketing videos to each of the establishments that generously offered to be a part of the video.

This was quite the fun challenge. We teamed up with Francis Parker School with the goal of delivering the latest campus renovation news to their community. They’ve been approved to renovate their Linda Vista campus and love keeping their alumni and community involved with the process. So, how can you deliver your message by video with a fun way of catching their attention, and engaging your viewer? Something different, might I add, than a traditional “talking head” video. In this instance, we decided by way of a “whiteboard” and stop-motion type of video. We all agreed that it would be a fun and different way to reach their community. So, lucky for them, they have a very talented Middle School teacher (DJ) who lent his talents to the project. Did I mention that we’ve never done a real whiteboard video? With a real (non animated) artist. I’m sure you’ve seen the fake, animated videos where there’s an arm moving over the already-completed photos, and it’s just computer and graphic animations and editing. Those are popular for simple generic messages and the whole video is done in the editing and effects programs.

This was the real deal.

First, we collaborated and met several times with Francis Parker to agree on the final message, the storyboard, and to test out what DJ is capable of doing. We quickly learned DJ could do just about anything.

Since we decided we would do this by shooting photos (time lapse), rather than video, we went with the Sony A7Rii camera due to the 8K sensor and 42 megapixels per photo. UUUGE photos. We’re talking very high resolution images which gives us the option to zoom in and out on the images while maintaining the sharpness and clarity. We soon found out while testing, that those high resolution settings gave the camera and SD card a fit while trying to write the huge images fast enough, even with the highest class and speed cards. It would chug along and not stay as consistent with the speed that we originally wanted (1 photo per second). So, we had to play with the speed of how often we wanted to take each photo in order to find the sweet spot with the remote, the camera, and card work flow. Fun.

So we turned on some music and spent the day filming DJ drawing all of the short segments. It was fun, we just let him do his thing. On average, DJ spent about 5-10 minutes for most of the simple drawings. “Simple”, ha. He made it look easy. It was impressive. The bigger pieces were 15-20 minutes. Unfortunately, for the sake of the final video, we often had to speed up past the beginning of each drawing and just show off some of his finishing touches. So you don’t get to see every image, from the very beginning, but you get the idea.

Finally, we threw it all in post, edited it down and added the camera movements, motion blur, and removed and added frames for the extra stop-motion effect on certain images.

Another fun fact, was that the voice over was recorded by one of their current middle school students, so that was great to incorporate to the project as well.

What a blast. We’re so glad we had a chance to film this year’s Art Alive / Bloom Bash at San Diego Museum of Art. What an event. Great food, spirits, and plenty of excitement and energy. All for a good cause in supporting our local museum. We hung around and “worked”, capturing as much video footage of the art, the patrons and guests, and the over all great times. There were dozens of local food and drink sponsors, everything from high profile restaurants, to donuts, and liquor. And of course the Patron girls that love to find their way on camera.

Photos are great to capture all of the candid, red carpet, and photo booth type of fun. It’s great for your future publications, posts, and press releases. We think that video just adds another great element to not only highlight how the event went, but to use in your future campaigns to promote next year’s event. The museum has hundreds and thousands of members, donors, and high profile local partners. What better way to show them a glimpse of what is to come, and to connect, with the addition of short video clips similar to this.

This was really a special one. These two were as magnetic and as perfect of a couple ready to be wed as can be. Smiles and laughter all around by all. Including us! It really is the main reason we love to film and be a part of a wedding day. The couple. Their families. Their friends. The dancing!

Brittany and Kyle started their day downtown, San Diego at The Omni Hotel. They had a sweet First Look on the roof top of the hotel, all to themselves. The views from the Omni were awesome. I thought it was nice that the hotel gave us access to that spot, so that they could have that moment to themselves. Sometimes the photographers and us have to improvise for a First Look spot, so I appreciated the privacy and views.

From there, they had a beautiful ceremony at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Lakeside. It was neat to learn that Brittany’s father had a hand in building and remodeling of the actual church, years ago, so getting to walk his daughter down the aisle that he had a part of laying down, was pretty special to witness. Afterwards, we jumped back in our cars and they celebrated and had their reception at The Luce Loft back downtown in San Diego. It was the first time shooting at that reception venue for us. I’m a fan. I’m usually drawn more towards the outdoor venues, the natural settings, but this had a real cool warehouse/industrial feel to it, and Brittany and Kyle added their own flair and personal touch nicely. It was also nice to cruise outside downtown with them for some late night filming as well.

Overall, we loved the ease and the sweetness of how the two carried themselves throughout the day, and with each other, and had a great time spending the day with them.

Lone Star Twang. Windy City grit. West Coast bent. Meet Trevor McSpadden. Pretty pumped on this one and the opportunity to shoot, direct, and put this little piece together for Trevor McSpadden and his band. Trevor was releasing his new single “April’s Fool” on April Fool’s Day. And he wanted to release a video along with the track. They are rolling out a whole new marketing and distribution campaign and it’s turning into a perfect fit for us to provide new video content and collaborate with them.

The goal was to capture them performing so they can continue to market themselves to venues and for future gigs. We wanted to do a little more than just throw a few cameras up at one of their live performances…that’s too easy. So we went to their buddy’s (bass player) sweet home here in San Diego where they often jam and rehearse and had some fun filming with them during one of their sessions. That room was awesome. Check out the decor and eclectic pieces. We had to shoot in there! Originally, we bounced the ideas around of filming at a local venue, renting studio space, or finding an artsy space for them. Trevor sent me pics of this room, and we all agreed this was perfect. It’s home for them anyways!

We have to admit, we really started to love the track. It grows on you. Don’t be surprised if you start tapping your foot and moving your head a little there.

Cheers to Trevor and the guys. It was a treat to work with talented musicians and a great group of guys. Enjoy the track. Lookout for more to come.

So you’ve completed a new business marketing video. Everybody on your team loves it. Great! So what do you do with the new video now? How do you get it out there to the world? Where should you upload it?

We’re all familiar with YouTube. It’s the biggest and most used video platform in the world. No doubt about it. Hundreds of millions of minutes are loaded onto YouTube daily. It’s a great home for your footage and it can help with your Google analytics and SEO . But is that the best place to put your video? Is it the only place to put your video? When hosting your video, think about the needs of your business.

Here’s a list of hosting platforms that you may not know about and the business-focused features you can expect from each.

Vimeo – Vimeo is the second largest video hosting platform. It’s great for artistic videos, great for creative professionals to host your work, personal videos, your portfolio, and samples. It’s great for production companies to load videos and not have to deal with ads on your videos, so your viewer can focus on your video and content. It has a very clean image and player; much better looking than YouTube (in our opinion). Your Vimeo channel and player can be customized as well which gives you many options how to display and organize your videos. You can also add collections, become a member and follow different Vimeo groups, and be involved in the Vimeo community and get inspired by other artist’s work. Finally, one of our favorite PROS is that you can upload and share videos longer than 15 minutes. Many other platforms have a time limit. You can get started for free with a basic account and upgrade to Pro and Plus paid memberships.

Wistia – If you’d like a thorough analysis of the results of your video, Wistia might be the right choice for you. Wistia is definitely geared towards video for businesses. There’s awesome analysis and video marketing tools available for you. You can see what your viewers watched, rewind, skip, replay, and also what other videos of yours they’ve watched. They have heat-maps which show favorite parts of videos and allow companies to target what exactly their viewers want to see. Wistia also has a call to action button at the end of the video which allows you to steer your viewers to another landing page, blog, or promotion of yours. Wistia also has the ability to generate and collect emails from viewers interested in your videos. You can try Wistia out for free with limited features, and upgrade from there to their bigger packages with more tools.

Vidyard – If you really want to break down the analytics of your videos even further and focus on making sure your videos are helping drive business, then Vidyard is another great hosting platform to consider. They will custom build and tailor a package for you and your needs, rather than sell you a bunch of features that you will never use. They have an enormous amount of tools available. From A/B testing and comparing of your videos, to lead generation, call to actions, heat-maps and graphs, and easy sharing and integration with social media. Vidyard helps focus on your leads, the contacts who watched your videos, and which videos are contributing to your ROI. It all comes with a price, like many of these video platforms, but very worth it if you want to track your results and drive business through video. Finally, their video speeds are blazing fast! Your viewers will not be waiting for your videos to load with Vidyard.

Sproutvideo – Another great subscription based hosting platform. Sprout has many many pro options and tools, more than you might need. Everything from security, to engagement tracking, and lead generation. You can track and tag your viewers and see the length of time they spent watching your videos. You can get their location and learn what type of device they watched on as well. There are lead captures, call to action features, and social sharing similar to other platforms. One thing we notice that we like, is how many options they give with player customization and the aesthetics of your videos. This may be very important to some companies. Depending on the plan you purchase, the amount of video you can upload will vary. The packages aren’t cheap, but definitely worth trying their free trial period.

Viddler – Viddler is another platform centered on helping businesses. It provides interactive online media solutions for corporate companies, interactive training, and digital publishers. Viddler pioneered the technology for in-video commenting and tagging. This is a great tool for businesses that focus on learning based video and content, and also for companies that want to give their viewer an interactive experience. The interactive element is useful for both customers and internally to your own employees. Studies show that interactive learning through video is very effective and more engaging than static video. Viddler offers many similar analytics and viewer engagement tools, call to action options, and various marketing tools. We do like how easy it is to upload videos and share them seamlessly, and especially the ability to batch load.

These are just a few of the excellent options out there. They each have their own pros and cons. It’s not real fair to compare each with each other because they offer different features and services. Apples and oranges. One thing is for sure, is to think about your audience, and how you want to use your video to help your business. Do you just want something free and easy to use with the simple intent of getting your name and video out there? Or do you want an effective tool that will help drive more business? In some instances, it’s good to use multiple players and upload to more than one platform, for different applications and tracking purposes. Have a plan and take advantage of these tools.

To be honest, there’s not a whole lot you can say about a couple like DeAnna and Tony. Such a dynamic, charismatic, lighthearted and sweet couple. You just have to see for yourself.

We had a such a fun day hanging with them and their families. We started early at the US Grant Hotel downtown San Diego. We love getting the chance to film some of the prep and getting ready footage. It’s a great opportunity to get a glimpse and capture the beginning of their wedding day. Especially for these two, who chose NOT to see each other until at the alter (which is still the best way to do it!). From there, we raced over to Our Lady of the Rosary church located a few blocks away in Little Italy, San Diego. This is a beautiful, Italian Catholic Parish with all the original and classic charm. Afterwards, their friends and guests celebrated at The Prado in Balboa Park nearby. The courtyard patio and their ballroom is definitely a favorite local venue. It was a perfect fit for them and their day.

The rest of the party went off without a hitch. They had a great live band and entertainment that kept the reception and everybody on their feet and having a good time. Great music, whether it’s a band or a good DJ, is such a difference maker and their live band didn’t disappoint.

Over all, I loved the classic and timeless feel of their wedding. From their style and personalities, to their thoughtfulness and ease to be around, we enjoyed our time getting to know them throughout the process and loved how everything unfolded.

Hooray! It’s taken a little time, but the San Diego Real Estate industry is finally jumping in with both feet, and utilizing the benefits of video in their marketing campaigns. And we couldn’t be more excited. For years, we’ve been pitching and quoting agents to let us film and profile their next listing, their community, and to use video to help with their business, website etc. I can’t tell you how often I would get this response…”Yeah, actually I already have photos.” Oh, that’s funny. I said video, not photography. V I D E O. There’s a difference. Or another favorite response,”We use our little camcorder in our office or our iPad.” No comment.

It’s no secret that video marketing has grown tremendously the last few years. I’ll spare you the percentages and statistics. That’s another blog entry. With video, we can give true virtual tours, we can highlight and feature details about your listing, or about your community, that perhaps a still photo most likely can’t. In the short 90 seconds, to 2 minutes that we have your attention span, with video we can showcase and describe the amenities of the house, the unique and custom material that the architect and developer used to build the home, or the award winning schools that are only blocks away from your listing. Many of these details are invaluable to your listing and might not come across the same in your photos or Zillow and Trulia listings.

We love the opportunity to get to know the agent, the home and the community. What’s special about it? What is different? Why do people want to live here? What’s the neighborhood like? And then we put together the story and the message that is best to deliver. Finally, we go have some fun with filming it all! Video equipment and technology keeps improving and the tools that we have still impress ourselves everyday. Who knew, we would be flying drones over golf courses and vineyards to show off how beautiful the grounds are in the neighborhood of your listing?

Our feeling is that video is complimentary to your photos and your website listing and all of the other social media outlets that you use. The photos are extremely important for your site, your brochures, and your flyers. The video is to dig even deeper and really grab your potential client or viewer’s attention. Out of town buyer? International perhaps? Send them the video. It’s proving to work and help reach more people. I also think it’s a great tool to show to sellers and prospects that you have a robust marketing plan which includes video. So even after your listing sells, your videos are still helping market your business.

This video is one of our latest. The Bridges at Rancho Santa Fe. I can’t say enough about this community. It’s one of the most exclusive around. Tuscan inspired homes, citrus groves, vineyards, an amazing world class clubhouse…who wouldn’t want to live there?

We had a great time running around and filming on their property. It really is one of the more unique, and nicest around that we’ve had the honor to be in. There literally isn’t a bad shot to get of that home or the community. Everybody was amazing to work with there as well. Enjoy.